Cormac Mccarthy's Suttree
Missing in Portuguese: Prolegomenon to a Translation of Cormac McCarthy‟s Suttree Michael Scott Doyle (University of North Carolina at Charlotte) Missing in Portuguese is a translation of Cormac McCarthy‟s fourth novel, Suttree.1 Why should this be of concern? Because Portuguese is a major world language,2 Cormac McCarthy is one of the most acclaimed contemporary American novelists, and Suttree, published in 1979, is one of his most lauded novels. McCarthy—winner of a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship (1981), also known as the “genius grant,” the National Book Award (1992) and National Book Critics Circle Award (1992) for his novel All the Pretty Horses, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize (2007), and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (2007) for The Road—is a high priest among American writers. While eight of his ten novels have been translated into Portuguese—O Guarda do Pomar in 1996 [The Orchard Keeper, 1965], Filho de Deus, 1994 [Child of God, 1974], Meridiano de Sangue, 2006 [Blood Meridian, 1985], Todos os Belos Cavalos, 1993 [All the Pretty Horses, 1992], A Travessia, 1999 [The Crossing, 1994], Cidades da Planície, 2001 [Cities of the Plain, 1998], Onde os Velhos Não Têm Vez, 2007 [No Country for Old Men, 2005] and A Estrada, 2007 [The Road, 2006]—Suttree awaits its rightful rendition into this major literary language as well.3 The translation-to-be will require the talents of a master wordsmith in order to felicitously bring the novel‟s many complexities into Portuguese, and doing so will enrich the library of world literature available in the Portuguese language.
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